If Congress votes no, Obama has indicated he might order airstrikes anyway. On Saturday, he asserted he has authority to act without Congress. And if Congress approves strikes against Syria, that still doesn’t make it the right move.

We would like to reiterate that the United States does not have a compelling national interest in getting involved militarily in the Syrian civil war — a point widely understood by the majority of Americans opposed to intervention. Furthermore, it’s difficult to see what exactly the Obama administration is trying to accomplish. There is a distinct lack of a broader, long-term strategy.

Airstrikes supposedly would punish President Bashar Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against innocent Syrian civilians. But how? They wouldn’t significantly degrade his stocks of such weapons (particularly since he probably has moved and hidden most of them since Obama signaled he was preparing to attack). They aren’t going to topple the Assad regime — and given that many of the Syrian rebels are allied with al-Qaida, the United States should be wary of that result anyway.

Indeed, there’s a lot of bad on both sides, with no guarantee that the Syrian people would be better off with someone else in power. America should not be influencing the outcome of a complex, volatile internal struggle.

Even if U.S. military action dissuades Assad from using chemical weapons again (itself a dubious assumption given his ruthlessness to hold on to power), he can proceed with killing scores of his people with conventional weapons. The death toll in Syria already is estimated to exceed 100,000 since the conflict began in 2011. Will the world sleep better if Assad’s forces murder, rape and torture Syrians the old-fashioned way?

With such weak foreign policy and humanitarian grounds for intervention, some have turned to politics to justify military action. Having already dared Assad not to cross the “red line” of using chemical weapons, Obama cannot back down and risk looking weak in the eyes of the world. Similarly, Congress cannot deny a president’s request for authorization of force because it will erode America’s “credibility” on the international stage.

This is called “escalation of commitment,” i.e., following one bad bet with another to justify the original losing decision. If you don’t arrest the urge early, it can escalate with increasingly destructive results.

Secretary of State John Kerry used to know this, lately, though, he’s been using the same arguments for military action in Syria that he derided his opponents for using in the previous conflicts. The irony and hypocrisy underscore the administration’s miscalculations on Syria.

Although it may not stop military action, Congress should vote no on authorizing force — at least as a way to put every lawmaker on record as to where he or she stands.